Nearly a decade after the nation’s deadliest terrorist attack, “strict security controls” didn’t stop dozens of illegal immigrants from receiving government clearance to train as pilots in the U.S. just as the 9/11 hijackers had done.

The unbelievable story comes via a Massachusetts news station that exposes the government’s failure to adequately protect the nation since Middle Eastern terrorists, trained at American flight schools, crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As a result of the 2001 massacre, the government supposedly implemented strict security measures to prevent undocumented foreigners from training at American flight schools.

Incredibly, illegal immigrants still get cleared to take flight lessons because the Homeland Security agency (Transportation Security Administration—TSA) that approves candidates doesn’t bother checking the central agency’s immigration database when it screens foreign flight-school applicants. That means flight schools throughout the U.S. could easily be filled with undocumented foreigners that could represent a national security threat.

At a flight school in Stow, a rural community about 25 miles west of Boston, more than 30 illegal aliens were cleared by the TSA to train as pilots. This week three of them said they came to the U.S. from Brazil legally but their visas expired, just like several of the 9/11 hijackers. Each man provided official TSA documents approving pilot lessons through the agency’s alien flight student program. The Brazilians assure the agency never asked them about their immigration status.

Now that they have flown for dozens of hours each, the government plans to deport them only because the media exposed the scandalous story. In a typical response for a government agency with egg on its face, TSA officials said they will “review the process” for clearing foreign nationals to become licensed pilots. In the meantime, the agency assures it performs a “thorough background check on each applicant.”